NOTE! Officer Jack Redfied was suspended from the Klamath Falls Police Force after giving this speech to the water-starved Klamath Ranchers at the irrigation headgates. - Editor

By Jack Redfield
Copyright 2001 by Jack Redfield

Many residents of Klamath County reading this letter will identify my name with law enforcement as I have been a member of the Klamath Falls Police Department for over 39 years. The content of this letter is not necessarily the opinion of the City of Klamath Falls or the Klamath Falls Police Department.

It is my opinion as a private citizen of Oregon and the United States and as a small ranch operator. I am not affected financially to the degree of other Klamath Basin ranchers due to non-ranch related income. I am also one of the fortunate few who irrigates from a well (for the time being), but there is no doubt that the so-called environmentalists will be initiating an effort to control or stop irrigation from ground water in the near future.

My considered opinion of the recent water crisis in the Klamath Basin, which has been initiated by the so-called environmentalists and our federal agencies, is that it is nothing more than an act of thinly-disguised domestic terrorism directed at the economy of the US.

I believe that the people who are orchestrating this atrocity are not environmentalists at all (although they may be being manipulated into believing they are doing the right thing), that they are actually acting in the capacity of environmental and/or economic terrorists (or at least extremists) who are launching a severe and effective attack upon the economy of the United States.

The same environmentalist extremists enjoyed a good deal of success in recent years with the spotted owl, which was also nothing more than an excuse to destroy the logging industry. There is no doubt that had the spotted owl not been considered an endangered species, they would have easily found another creature, be it a reptile, fish, other bird, rodent, etc. that needed to be protected to further their cause. So be it with the suckers. In other parts of the nation where such nonsense is starting, I am hearing reports of endangered gnatcatchers, shrimp, turtles, other fish, etc.

Recently the terrorists-extremists have enjoyed a tremendous success in shutting down our local agriculture with no regards at all to the misery and destruction of thousands of local ranchers, farmers, local business people. They have also found a great amount of support through the liberal federal court system within the ninth district. I don't see that changing until the case makes it to the U.S. Supreme Court, but that takes time and I am afraid that it will be too late for many of our local people by then.

Our only hope is that Congress will recognize where this is going within the entire nation and take action to modify the endangered species act to achieve a reasonable balance between the needs of endangered species and the livelihood of American citizens.

This is not a local issue. I would suggest that the Klamath Basin attack is nothing more than a test case. With the success that the environmental extremists and some out of control federal agents (so called public servants, hah) have recently enjoyed, they will not stop in the Klamath Basin.

They are already up to their devious evil in other parts of Oregon and in other states. Considering that there is a good deal of agriculture in nearly every state in the nation, this thing will spread like wildfire and before long I believe that our way of life as we now know it will be very different.

We have seen a great deal of restraint among our local agriculture community and our local business people who are threatened, despite the extreme emotional trauma that they are experiencing and their understandable anger. Their professionalism and restraint during the recent bucket brigade demonstration was remarkable. This will not last.

As the extremists and out-of-control federal agents continue to push and as the agricultural people see their fields turn brown and their entire lives destroyed, their frustration will undoubtedly escalate to the point of boiling over. It won't take much from Andy Kerr or Wendell Wood or their like to spark an extremely violent response. I am talking about rioting, homicides and destruction of property like dams that hold the precious water from the agricultural community.

When you expand the crisis to our 50 states over the next year or two as this madness progresses, you are looking at the destruction of the livelihoods of millions of people and businesses. Will that strike a violent response? I think so!

As the economy of the entire nation is threatened and crumbles, I think that the leaders of other nations who are not necessarily friends of the United States will be smiling broadly. Will our national security be threatened? I certainly think so!

Is it possible that there are foreign governments who would enjoy a severe economic crisis in the United States, and is it possible that these foreign governments who are not friendly to the United States might be rendering substantial financial support to this economic attack? What better way to bring a nation to its knees than to attack their agriculture water supply?)

Is there a possibility that this could lead to civil war within the United States? I think the potential for extreme violence, even to the extent of civil war is possible if action is not taken in the very near future to remedy this tragedy.

Compare this to the economic collapse of the Soviet Union. Is it possible that a foreign power was instrumental in their economic collapse? Is the U.S. next? Are other nations who depend heavily on agriculture - such as Australia - experiencing an attack of the same nature?

I am seriously afraid that if our United States Congress and the federal court system does not wake up and stop this madness, this nation is about to experience an era that has the potential to severely damage or completely destroy our nation's economy. Should this happen, all the efforts of our political leaders, military forces and loyal U.S. citizens in the history of our nation will have gone for naught. The promises of the United States government to all those veterans of foreign wars and other United States citizens will become as worthless as their dry fields. God help us if our federal government doesn't come to their senses and recognize the extreme danger of this fiasco before it is too late!

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Fort Dix Internment
and Relocation Training Camp

by Diane Alden

Veritas News Service - July 28, 2001 -- The bad news first: There is no good news. Public education and government schools are a mess. If it were a business it would be in receivership. If it were mentally ill it would be in a padded cell on heavy doses of lithium and Prozac. Nevertheless, after Social Security, public education is the secondary third rail of American life and politics - it isn't supposed to be touched. It is THE sacred cow of modern times.
Listening to the National Education Association, Congress or almost any politician, each of them has the latest nostrum for fixing education. Count on the fix amounting to billions more dollars year in and year out.

The result of the avoidance of the truth will be that our children and grandchildren will face a future looking up from the bottom of the international scholastic heap in every crucial subject area. Why else are we having to import computer engineers, analysts and scientists from the Far East?

By the Numbers Ye Shall Know Them

According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, there are approximately 52 million elementary and secondary school students in the U.S. Forty-six million are in government schools, 5.9 million in private, and 1.7 million in home schooling, which is growing by the day. Class sizes have decreased since 1970 from 24 and 20 elementary and secondary students per teacher, respectively, to 18 and 14 elementary and secondary students per teacher today. Fifty-two percent of schools are operating below capacity, 26 percent at capacity and 22 percent are overcrowded.

Ninety-eight percent of schools have Internet access.

Education expenditures climbed to $647 billion for the 1999-2000 school year. Sixty percent of that spending was for elementary and secondary schools. An unbelievable 7 percent of our gross domestic product was spent on education.

What do we get for all those big bucks? The 2000 National Assessment of Educational Progress found that 68 percent of fourth-grade students in the U.S. are reading below proficient level. Sixty-three percent of African-American students, 58 percent of Hispanic students, and 47 percent of children in urban schools are reading below basic level, which is a step below the proficient level. Additionally, African-American and Hispanic children slip farther behind from year to year.

It gets worse. At the post-secondary level, ALL two-year institutions have to offer remedial courses in reading, writing and math, while 81 percent of four-year institutions and 63 percent of private four-year institutions must do so. That means freshmen are taking courses in English and math and reading that they already should have had firmly planted in their mental database.

They aren't getting the basics in government schools, but they sure do know about recycling. They don't know the correct answers to basic questions, but they sure do feel good about themselves. This predicament is not exactly a bargain for the nearly $700 billion we spend on education per year. Imagine if that money were parceled out to families what they could accomplish with their own educational dollars.

American high school seniors came in 19th out of 21 countries in math and dead last in advanced placement math.

Nearly 60 percent of children watch three to four hours of TV per day, and of those 12 percent watch six or more hours per day.

Fourth-grade students who reported teachers using the phonics approach as opposed to whole word scored significantly higher in reading than students who didn't have this help.

For all the money we spend, the General Accounting Office states that "federally funded programs have historically placed a low priority on results and accountability." From 1984 to 1997 there was an additional $78 billion heaped on education with no results of any note - except that things got worse.

Foundations are not a big help in improving education and they have NEVER been much help. They give billions to badly conceived fads and teaching techniques or physical arrangements that have no earthly benefit in educating children. From open campuses to environmental mis-education, from values clarification to multiculturalism, some foundation has funded every single fad, foolish policy and pointless teachers program that has come over the educational horizon.

A Philanthropy magazine investigation found that ". total philanthropic giving for all causes in 1999 was $190.2 billion, according to the AAFRC Trust for Philanthropy report titled 'Giving USA 2000.' Of that amount, $27.5 billion (14.4 percent) went to education. Giving to education is the largest category of philanthropy spending after religion (individuals give the most to religion) and its annual increase in recent years has averaged around 10 percent."

Yet the fact is most grants go to the officials in the failed school systems with the worst performance. Big bucks given to places where there is no oversight of what happens to that money. As Philanthropy states, "a review of the Foundation Center's database of about 10,000 grantmakers and 100,000 sample grants is instructive. Of the 50 largest grants described as funding elementary and secondary school reform, 24 went directly to public school systems or public school funding entities. Another 19 went to nonprofit organizations, some of them closely identified with the education establishment like the Education Commission of the States. None of the grants was for reform of public, private or parochial schools."

Past as Prologue

The major foundations were founded primarily by what is now known as the Eastern American establishment. They were and are the ruling class, the big money changers, movers and shakers. Hardly anyone in high office has gotten there without help from some of them. In America there are exceptions to that rule, but I would bet every president in the last hundred years has had assistance from that establishment or he wouldn't have become president.

An establishment figure himself, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote in 1965, ". the New York financial and legal community was the heart of the American establishment . its front organizations were the Rockefeller, Ford and Carnegie Foundations."

In his seminal work on foundations, "Foundations: Their Power and Influence," Dr. Rene Wormser maintains that they are an interlocking monopoly of power. These temporal monuments to the captains and the kings have churned out the social engineers and teaching establishment and its intellectual underpinnings for nearly every generation of the last hundred years. These days, they consider educational policies for creating the new world citizen. To do this, Wormser believes, they have deliberately attacked Judeo-Christian morality and replaced the Enlightenment man with the socially engineered citizen of the coming corporate world order.

Well, shades of conspiracy theory, tin foil helmets and black helicopters. Conspiracy or no, the foundations invariably defend what they do. They offer a huge network of support, grants and perks which they use as the vehicle for promoting and creating progressive policies. In America's case progressive policies mean statist, collectivist, socialist, or some combination thereof.

There has always been a control-freak factor among the elite, a bias and a desire to create the perfect corporate citizen of the perfect state. That is what modern elites must do in order to maintain control. But if the citizens are well trained in their duties and have amusements along with some hope of attaining material goods, they don't seem to be aware of the overarching controlling forces under the surface. They pay little attention to the liberties and choices they are losing. Our citizenry is being trained rather than educated.

History indicates foundations usually provide the funding for terrible ideas. All one has to do is look at how much foundation money has gone into the work of bioethicist Dr. Peter Singer to see how outrageous some of these endeavors are. Singer, if you recall, theorizes that parents should be allowed to euthanize their children from newborn up to 2 years old. He also believes there is no difference between people and animals. Singer teaches in a major American university funded by several foundation grants.

Part of his funding came from the Rockefeller family. They have been the kingpins in promoting goofball ideas. That is bad enough, but they have been major funders of some real 20th century horrors as well. It is well known that the Rockefeller Foundation was the original moneybags for the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Weimar Germany. That institute served up eugenics and Hitler's racial policies. The Rockefellers ended the funding in 1936, too late to stop the worst of the practices from being put into eventual operation. The Institute gave the world everything from Liebensborn to the science used for the "final solution."



The Scholars Who Trace the Educational Establishment

There are several books on what has happened to American education. In previous articles, I have mentioned these studies. They include "The Cloning of the American Mind" by Beverly Eakman, "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America" by Charlotte Iserbyt, and "The Underground History of American Education" by John Taylor Gatto.

A recent book by scholar Diane Ravitch is titled "Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reform." Ravitch's book traces the failures of public education back 100 years. The educational ideas she delineates in her book came to public education courtesy of the major universities and Eastern establishment foundations.

Ravitch states: "[C]onventional wisdom decreed that subject matter and academic curriculum were outmoded, that the curriculum should never be prescribed by city or state officials but jointly planned by teachers and pupils, that it should be based on students' interests and needs, not on the logical organization of subjects, that experiences and activities were more valuable to students than reading and study, that schools should offer different programs to different groups of students . that students should be promoted every year, regardless of performance, and that professional educators should think of themselves as social engineers, empowered to decide what was best for the students and the rest of society."

She relates that one of the progressive-minded pedagogues was a man named G. Stanley Hall, America's first Ph.D. in psychology. Edward Everett was America's first Ph.D., and both men had an enormous impact on public education. Both were elitists in that neither had any faith or belief in the average American's ability to learn.

Hall's beliefs may be summed up in this statement: "We must overcome the fetishism of the alphabet, of the multiplication tables, of grammars, of scales, and of bibliolatry . it would be no serious loss if a child never learned to read."

Hall looked on American children for the most part as a "great army of incapables, shading down to those who should be in schools for dullards or subnormal children, for those whose mental development heredity decrees a slow pace and an early arrest." Apparently Dr. Hall would fit in well with the current thinking behind public education today.

That thinking also reflected the belief system of the Rockefellers and Fords toward the lower classes. Henry Ford just wanted a person who could follow directions and put the screws and parts in the right places. Rockefeller sought a pliant workforce as well. It is mighty odd that capitalists and socialists combined forces to stomp American education into the ground.

Public schools grew out of the mid-19th century philanthropic giving. Historian Robert Seybolt states that even BEFORE public education, literacy was on the rise among both men and women. Up to 98 percent were literate before the establishment of public schools. Alexis de Tocqueville observed that it was rare to find a New Englander who had not received elementary education and who was not "well-versed in the history and Constitution of the United States."

It was during the great waves of immigration that began in the mid-nineteenth century that the 'free school' notion took hold. Ironically, it was the education subcommittee of the Massachusetts Legislature that warned about institutionalizing education:

"The establishment of the Board of Education seems to be the commencement of a system of centralization and monopoly of power in a few hands, contrary, in every respect, to the true spirit of democratic institutions; and which, unless speedily checked, may lead to unlooked for and dangerous results."

Horace Mann dismissed such critics as "vandals and bigots," and ultimately he prevailed. He became the first secretary of the first state board of education in Massachusetts. During his reign he introduced the first state-run system in 1852. Within 30 years, every Northern state had followed suit, and while only two states had mandatory attendance laws before the Civil War, most others passed such laws after Reconstruction.

In a convergence of historical events the great tides of history melded into policy.

During the great immigration to the U.S. from Ireland and southern and central Europe, historical trends collided with one another. The great capital empires being built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries joined forces with the ideas cooking in America's intellectual class. That class was beginning to feel its power as it took control of the institutions of higher learning. This was an intellectual class that adopted many of its forms and ideas from Germany's Hegel and Marx. Their intellectual arguments regarding the nature of man and his relationship to the state were set in place by our Eastern intellectual class.

Out of that lethal combination came the theory that the average (non-elite) child should become more of an automaton to be trained than an individual to be educated. In that early era as it is today, a truly educated person is a critical person, a citizen who does not go along merely because the new elite demands it. When government entered the mix, education was doomed.

In any case, at the turn of the 20th century the principal capitalists were taking the heat for being successful and had to endure the jealousy and envy that went along with success. This is a partial reason why they became philanthropists. Soak-the-rich schemes led to the 16th Amendment and the income tax. Of course, the soaking has been done to the middle class as well as the rich ever since.

In response to criticism, Rockefeller, Carnegie and others looked for places to put their excess fortunes. J.D. Rockefeller jumped into the educational arena in 1902. That is when his family began funding New York's Columbia Teachers College. It was the "progressive" ideas and causes at the Teachers College which caught their fancy. The worst of those ideas haunt us to this day.

Psychology, eugenics, environmentalism and a host of progressive notions and really bad educational ideas got their sustenance from America's fortunate sons. The ideas behind the new theories came from Europe, especially from the Hegelian German school of thought.

While it is obvious that America divorced Europe with the Revolution, its intellectual class ended up adopting the worst of European ideas. Then came the capitalists. Heaven forbid these great entrepreneurs should be considered anti-progressive or, even worse, very "American." The worst thing the intellectual class did to America and to its capitalists was to deny what was righteous and best about the American character and accompanying philosophy.

The intellectual class despised the ideas that created the American experiment and republican government in the first place. Since the American character had been honed on ideas born in the Enlightenment and in Judeo-Christian thought and tradition, something had to replace it. European theories of the organic state and the primacy of the state over the individual was that replacement.

So our pointy-heads embraced, with a characteristic blindness, the worst that Europe had to offer. Unfortunately, they got the innovators to go along for the ride.

In addition, the intellectual class depended on the guilt and bigotry of the capitalists in order to create the new man.

Primary Education and Teacher Training

"The ultimate problem of all education is to coordinate the psychological and the social factors. ... The coordination demands that the child be capable of expressing himself, but in such a way as to realize social ends." - John Dewey.

John Dewey, father of progressive education, was a disciple of Hegel. Dewey stated that literacy was the greatest obstacle to socialism. He was funded in no small part by American foundations - in particular, the Rockefeller Foundation.

The Rockefeller reasons for doing so were altruistic. Old J.D. Rockefeller stated: "I believe the power to make money is a gift from God - just as are the instincts for art, music, literature, the doctor's talent, yours to be developed and used to the best of our ability for the good of mankind. Having been endowed with the gift I possess, I believe it is my duty to make money and still more money and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow-man according to the dictates of my conscience." Unfortunately, he did not choose wisely in distributing those funds.

John Jr. gave the first funds to Columbia Teachers College in 1902 as a promise to God because he and his family were saved from a fire that destroyed their family home in Pocantico Hills, New York.

"The Leipzig Connection" by Paolo Lionni says that the Rockefeller General Education Board set Columbia Teachers College financially on its feet. Not long after that, the first volume on educational psychology, written by Thorndike, was published.

Lionni writes: "That same year, after a decade in Chicago experimenting with children, John Dewey joined the faculty of Columbia University as a member of the departments of philosophy and education, in a unique position to influence advanced students in Teachers College. With Russell, Cattell, Thorndike, and the other Wundtians, Dewey set the ball rolling for an amalgam of "educational" psychology and socialism. It became known as "Progressive Education" and, emanating from Columbia's Teachers College for the next half-century, it slowly but surely became commonplace in every school in the country."

Columbia Teachers College invented educational psychology and maintained a monopoly for years. It hired German-educated Wundtian psychologists instituting destructive theories and practices based on "opinion parading as science and German racist ideas (genetics, eugenics), invalid notions of 'man' and how to 'control' him."

Since men like Rockefeller, Ford and Carnegie were also bigots, as were most WASPs of the era, they viewed the incoming flood of Catholic immigrants as a serious reason to get involved in society, population control, and education. More likely they were frightened of losing control and so concentrated on manipulating society rather than educating it. It was only one step from adopting the ideas of the intellectual class and using them as tools for training individuals as a working force. Foundations since their inception have been the leading promoters and boosters of Hegelian manipulative fads and pseudo-science.

The Best-laid Plans

The free schools of the mid-1800s were geared to teaching the compliant and barely competent immigrant child as a future worker. In Massachusetts, men like Edward Everett took the ideas of the Prussian school of thought and transplanted them to the U.S. According to these theories, children were to be removed from their parents as early as possible and placed in "kindergartens" to be weaned from loyalty to parents and churches, and trained rather than educated. Thus, children became wards of the state in a sense, to be molded for whatever ends the state saw fitting.

Does that sound familiar? It should, because we are dealing with the worst of it today.

Recently the educrats in D.C. maintained that it would be best if children as young as 2 were placed in a school setting. Take away the kid from the parent and train him in the way of the state. Since they don't believe in teaching basic core subjects any longer, they must be training them for some purpose. My guess is they seek to develop the person best fitted to become a functionary of the corporate state. The thought of a free and independent person with unalienable rights given to them by God scares the heck out of the educrats.

But in the early days of the 20th century, the progressive education plans of the WASP establishment were spoiled to some extent.

It was the upstart Catholic and private schools movement, which grew out of necessity, that upset the elite apple cart. As the century unfolded, the establishment, capitalists, foundations and government were loathe to give tax breaks to Catholic or other private schools. They clung to their monopoly using the First Amendment in such a twisted way it took the best lawyers in the country to change the establishment of religion clause to something it was not. BUT it was a very fortunate thing for those private schools. Today they are better off because they did not have foundation or government money with the hooks and strings attached to what could be taught and how they could teach it.

Unfortunately, in the modern era, however, even some of the parochial schools have given in to weird educational theories served off the plate of the corporate state and funded in no small part by American foundations. John Dewey is alive and well, and he and Maslow and Rogers are living in a couple of Catholic schools and definitely in all government schools. That is a pity for America's children.

Still, enough of these independent schools have the good sense to teach basic reading and math so that kids learn and succeed. Children from the inner city who are taught in Catholic schools shine in comparison with their public school contemporaries. A former bishop of New York City accepted the challenge of taking the poorest kids from the worst schools and educating them to a far higher standard than the education they received in the public schools. Their success galls the establishment. After repeated failures, that establishment still insists on engineering a child to be full of self-esteem but no learning - a "processed" child with few critical thinking skills and almost no self-discipline.

One of the most hopeful signs of the 21st century is the home-schooling movement. It may be THE fly in the eye of our current crop of masters of the universe. These government stooges and the plutocrats from the temples of wealth and power will do their utmost to make it as hard as possible for home school practitioners to thrive and survive. But they will survive, and they will continue to outperform the government product by light years. That is what makes them so dangerous to the powers that be.

It is hoped that private schools and home schooling will grow exponentially. For without that independence, American education would be worse off than it is. Aside from Sam Walton and perhaps one or two others, American foundations do not offer grants to home-schooled children or to private schools for poor children. That is too bad. It is also short-sighted and unfair, because the best things in education today are the various independent educational efforts by private groups and individuals.

(In my next piece find out how ideas such as whole word versus phonics and no-error math got started. Why is educational psychology used as a sledgehammer to kill learning? These "progressive" ideas did not appear out of thin air. They grew out of hothouse educational theories funded by . guess who? Learn about "the process" (a term of experimental psychology) and "applying the process" to the profession of teaching. Now these groups want to spread educational failure worldwide, but other countries are having none of it.)

Please check out www.aldenchronicles.com and sign the anti-CARA and Klamath petitions. Also listen to me Monday and Friday mornings with Steve Myers on the Liberty Works Network out of Washington, D.C.

We The People Foundation For
Constitutional Education, Inc.
2458 Ridge Road, Queensbury, NY 12804
Telephone: (518) 656-3578 Fax: (518) 656-9724
www.givemeliberty.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 20, 2001
CONTACT: Mike Bodine (518) 656-3578

Veritas News Service - DOJ and the U.S. Congress Officially Commit to Send IRS Tax and Legal Experts to Appear on Capitol Hill. Public Hearing to be Conducted by Rep. Roscoe Bartlett and Rep. Henry Hyde to Answer Citizens' Challenges of IRS Jurisdiction and Illegal Enforcement of U.S. Tax Law.

Washington D.C. -- We The People Foundation For Constitutional Education, Inc. announce that the Department of Justice and the U.S. Congress have committed, in writing, to appear with IRS representatives in a recorded, public meeting to officially answer to charges challenging the legal jurisdiction of the IRS and the enforcement of U.S income tax laws against U.S. citizens.

Department of Justice U.S. Assistant Attorney General Dan Bryant and Congressmen Roscoe Bartlett (MD) signed the written agreement Friday that commits the government to send their top tax and legal experts to a two-day September hearing to be conducted on Capitol Hill. These actions are in response to a proper petition for redress of grievances brought by Robert Schulz, Chairman of the Foundation. Schulz ended his 3-week hunger fast mid-afternoon today after having secured official commitment from representatives of the U.S. Government that his formal petition will be answered.

Schulz has been in Washington since July 4th on a hunger fast until death, if needed, to force the government to respond to his legal Remonstrance, a petition for redress of grievances. These grievances include challenges of IRS jurisdiction, routine and gross violations of due process by the IRS, the refusal of the IRS to cite the specific law that requires employers or employees to withhold taxes and the fraudulent ratification of the 16th (Income Tax) Amendment.

DOJ's Bryant is quoted, "The American people are entitled to answers. It is in our nation's interest that we participate and answer these questions."

While largely ignored by the media and other government officials, Rep. Bartlett has stood alone on the Hill (until recently) in public defense of Schulz's absolute Constitutional Right to petition for redress and be answered by the government. On Tuesday, Bartlett initiated a formal Congressional Inquiry to the IRS demanding official government responses for Schulz.

Today, DOJ's Dan Bryant agreed to Rep. Bartlett's requirements that the "congressional briefing-like hearings" be conducted in public and be recorded and broadcast live. The meetings will have appropriate procedural controls and security. It is expected Rep. Henry Hyde (IL), former Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee will gavel the sessions.

Schulz was "elated that government officials have finally responded as they are required by both the 1st Amendment to the Constitution and their oaths of office."

The agreement, penned on Congressional letterhead, was signed at the Department of Justice headquarters. Bryant assured both Rep. Bartlett and Schulz there is "virtually no chance of being overridden on this matter." Bartlett promised Schulz, "I assure you. The IRS will be there at those meetings."

Schulz continued, "I have met with these gentlemen face-to-face and have looked in their eyes. I am satisfied they are men of honor. We have cemented our agreement with a handshake. The fast ends today.

After decades of obfuscation, avoidance, creative restructuring and 'simplification' of the 9,500-page tax code, the truth is about to be revealed. The Sovereign Citizens have exercised their Right to petition.

It is no coincidence that President Bush revealed in this week's New York Times that the government has begun to publicly discuss alternative tax systems, including disposal of the entire tax code. The internet and talk radio have facilitated detailed research, documentation and discussion of these charges across the nation.

If our income tax system is publicly confirmed to be without force of law upon the People, and is truly as 'voluntary' as the IRS so often advertises, it is highly likely that the government may move quickly to implement a replacement tax such as a national sales tax. The People must remain vigilant that one illegal tax is not replaced by another.

The taxing powers granted to the federal government by our Constitution are explicit, limited and must be complied with. Since 1787, the mechanism for an orderly and peaceful transition to a legal tax system has resided in Article 1 Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution. This is a states' Rights issue.

The day that our government has shunned has arrived. The Sovereign Citizens have formally demanded and exercised their Rights. We The People have been heard."

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Joint Chiefs proposed terrorist attacks upon America as Pretext for Cuban Invasion.

Was Kennedy assassination a part of this plan?

Was the Oklahoma City bombing a modern version of the same idea? Was the target American Patriots and Militias?

Veritas News Service - Exclusive - July 17, 2001 -- In his new exposé of the National Security Agency entitled Body of Secrets, author James Bamford highlights a set of proposals on Cuba by the Joint Chiefs of Staff codenamed OPERATION NORTHWOODS. This document, titled "Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba" was provided by the JCS to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March 13, 1962, as the key component of Northwoods. Written in response to a request from the Chief of the Cuba Project, Col. Edward Lansdale, the Top Secret memorandum describes U.S. plans to covertly engineer various pretexts that would justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba. These proposals - part of a secret anti-Castro program known as Operation Mongoose - included staging the assassinations of Cubans living in the United States, developing a fake "Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington," including "sink[ing] a boatload of Cuban refugees (real or simulated)," faking a Cuban airforce attack on a civilian jetliner, and concocting a "Remember the Maine" incident by blowing up a U.S. ship in Cuban waters and then blaming the incident on Cuban sabotage. Bamford himself writes that Operation Northwoods "may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government."

Download the Report 777K

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Two Modern Views of Government

A Speech by Senator Tom McClintock
Western CPAC Conference, Los Angeles, June 9, 2001

There are two modern views of government that begin from entirely different premises.

There is the 18th Century American view propounded by our nation's founders. They believed, and formed a government based upon that belief, that each of us is endowed by our creator with certain rights that cannot be alienated, and that governments are instituted to protect those rights. This view is proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence and reflected in the American Bill of Rights.

The second view is 19th Century German in origin and expressed in the philosophies of Marx and Hegel and Nietzsche. It is a restatement of philosophies of absolutism that have plagued mankind for millennia. In this view, rights come not from God, but from the state. What rights you have are there because government has given them to you, all for the greater good - defined, of course, by government.

In the 20 years I have been actively engaged in public policy, I have seen the growing influence of this 19th Century German view. It disdains the view of the American Founders. It rejects the notion of inalienable rights endowed equally to every human being by the "laws of nature and of nature's God." In this view, it is the state, and not the individual, where rights are vested.

I mention this, because of a debate that occurred last week on the floor of the State Senate. It was a debate that occurred under the portrait of George Washington and the gold-emblazoned motto, "Senatoris Est Civitatis Libertatum Tueri" - "The Senators protect the Liberty of the Citizens."

At issue was a measure, SB 52, which will require a state-issued license to own a firearm for self-defense. To receive a license, you would have to meet a series of tests, costs and standards set by the state.

We have seen many bills considered and adopted that would infringe upon the right of a free people to bear arms. But this was the most brazen attempt in this legislature to claim that the very right of self-defense is not an inalienable natural right at all, but is rather a right that is licensed from government; a right that no longer belongs to you, but to your betters, who will license you to exercise that right at their discretion.

During the debate on this measure, which passed the Senate 25 to 15, I raised these issues. And I would like to quote to you the response of Senator Sheila Kuehl, to the approving nods of the Senators whose duty is to protect the liberty of the citizens.

She said, "There is only one constitutional right in the United States which is absolute and that is your right to believe anything you want."

I want to focus on that statement. "The only constitutional right which is absolute is your right to believe anything you want."

Now, compare that to the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

What rights have a slave? There is only one: a slave can think anything he wants: as long as he doesn't utter it or act on it - he may think what he wants. He has no right to the fruit of his labor; no right to self-defense, no right to raise his children, no right to contract with others for his betterment, no right to worship - except as his master allows. He has only the right to his own thoughts. All other rights are at the sufferance of his master - whether that master is a state or an owner.

Now, let us continue to look at this new constitutional principle propounded by Senator Kuehl, under the portrait of George Washington to the delight of her colleagues whose duty, according to the proud words above them, is to "Protect the Liberty of the Citizens."

She continued, "Other than that, (the right to your own thoughts) government has the ability to say on behalf of all the people - I will put it in the colloquial way as my grandmother used to - your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins. It's a balance of your rights and my rights because we all have constitutional rights. And the question for government is how do we balance those rights?"

Indeed, the right to swing your fist does end where my nose begins. An excellent analogy. Shall we therefore amputate your fist so that you can never strike my nose? And would you deny me the use of my own fist to protect my nose?

Senator Kuehl and her colleagues believe government has the legitimate authority to do so. It is simply the question of balancing.

It is very important that we understand precisely what Senator Kuehl and the Left are saying.

A thief balances your right to your wallet against his right to eat. A murderer balances your right to life against his right to freedom. A master balances your right to "work and toil and make bread," against his right to eat it. These are matters of balance.

The American view is quite different. In the view of the American Founders, the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God endow each of us with rights that are inalienable, and we are each equal in those rights. It is not a balancing act. These rights are absolute. They cannot be alienated.

But in a state of nature, there are predators who would deny us those rights. And thus we come together to preserve our freedom. In the American view, the only legitimate exercise of force by one person over another, or by one government over its people, is "to secure these rights."

Senator Kuehl continues, "My right to defend myself in the home does not extend to my owning a tank, though that would make sense to me, perhaps, that no one would attack my home if I had a tank sitting in the living room."

Let us put aside, for a moment, the obvious fact that a tank is only an instrument of self-defense against a power that employs a tank. But let us turn to the more reasonable side of her argument: that rights can be constrained by government; that there is, after all, "no right to shout 'fire' in a crowded theater. How can a right be absolute and yet constrained by government?

To Senator Kuehl and the Left, the answer is simply, "it's easy -- whenever we say so." Or, in her words, "government has the ability to say (so) on behalf of all the people."

The American Founders had a different view, also, not surprisingly, diametrically opposed to Senator Kuehl's way of thinking.

The right is absolute. In a free nation, government has no authority to forbid me from speaking because I might shout "fire" in a crowded theater. Government has no authority to forbid me from using my fist to defend myself because I might also use it to strike your nose. And government has no authority to forbid me from owning a firearm because I might shoot an innocent victim.

Government is there to assure that the full force of the law can be brought against me if I discharge that right in a manner that threatens the rights of others. It does not have the authority to deny me those very rights for fear I might misuse them.

Senator Kuehl continues, "In my opinion, this bill is one of those balances. It does not say you cannot have a gun. It does not say you cannot defend yourself. It says if you are going to be owning and handling and using a dangerous item you need to know how to use it, and you need to prove that you know how to use it by becoming licensed."

How reasonable. How reassuring. How despotic.

We must understand what they are arguing, because it is chilling. They are arguing that any of our most precious rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights - any at least they decide are conceivably dangerous -- may only be extended through the license of the government.

If that is the case, they are not rights. With that one despotic principle, you have just dissolved the foundation of the entire Bill of Rights. You have created a society where your only right is to your own thoughts.

Inalienable rights are now alienated to government, and government may extend or refuse them upon its whim - or more precisely, upon a balancing act to be decided by government. Let us follow - in our minds at least - a little farther down this path.

Hate groups publish newsletters to disseminate their hatred and racism. Sick individuals in our society act upon this hatred. The Oklahoma City bombing killed a score of innocent children. Shouldn't we license printing presses and Internet sites to prevent the pathology of hate from spreading? Such an act doesn't say you cannot have a press. It does not say you cannot express yourself. It says if you are going to be owning and handling a printing press, you should know what not to say and prove that you can restrain yourself by becoming licensed.

And what are we to do about rogue religions like those that produced Heaven's Gate and Jonestown. How many people around the world are killed by acts of religious fanaticism every year? Should we not license the legitimate churches? Such an act doesn't say you cannot have a church. It does not say you cannot worship. It says if you are going to be running and conducting a church, that you must know how to worship and prove that you know how by becoming licensed.

The only right you have is the right to believe anything you want. The only right of a slave. The rest is negotiable - or to use the new word, "balanceable."

In 1838, a 29 year old Abraham Lincoln posed the question for which he would ultimately give his life. Years later, he would debate Stephen Douglas, who argued that freedom and slavery were a matter of political balance. But in this speech, he spoke to the larger question that we must now confront:

"Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step over the ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! -- All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a Thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."

The American Founders worried about the same thing. Late in life, Jefferson wrote to Adams, "Yes we did create a near perfect union; but will they keep it, or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom. Material abundance is the surest path to destruction."

And as I listened to Senator Kuehl proclaim that "the only constitutional right in the United States which is absolute . is your right to believe anything you want," and as I gazed at the portrait of George Washington, and as I thought about the solemn words, "the Senators Protect the Liberty of the Citizens," I couldn't help but think of an aide to George Washington by the name of James McHenry, who accompanied the General as they departed Independence Hall the day the Constitution was born. He recorded this encounter between Benjamin Franklin and a Mrs. Powell. She asked, "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" Answered Dr. Franklin, "A republic, madam, if you can keep it."

For this generation, that is no longer a hypothetical question. History warns us that to one generation in five falls the duty - the highest duty and the most difficult duty of this Republic - to preserve the liberty of the citizens. It is the most difficult, because as Lincoln warned, it is a threat that springs up not on a foreign shore where we can see it - it springs up amongst us. It cannot be defeated by force of arms. It must be defeated by reason.

Have you noticed yet, that ours is that generation? And how ironic it would be that the freedoms won with the blood of Washington's troops, and defended by so many who followed, should be voluntarily thrown away piece by piece by a generation that had become so dull and careless and pampered and uncaring that it lost the memory of freedom.

The Athenian Democracy had a word for "citizen" that survives in our language today. "Politikos." Politician. The Athenians believed that a free people who declare themselves citizens assume a duty to declare themselves politicians at the same time. It is time we took that responsibility very seriously.

In 1780, the tide had turned in the American Revolution, and the Founders began to sense the freedom that was within sight. John Adams wrote these words to his wife that spring. He said, "The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain."

Ladies and gentlemen, the debate is not about guns. It is about freedom. And the wheel has come full circle. Our generation must study politics that we may restore the liberty that our parents and grandparents expect us to pass on to our children and grandchildren.

If we fail, what history will demand of our children and grandchildren, in a society where their only right is to their own thoughts, is simply unthinkable. And be assured, history will find it unforgivable. A generation that is handed the most precious gift in all the universe - freedom - and throws it away -- deserves to be reviled by every generation that follows - and will be, even though the only right left to them is their own thoughts.

But if we succeed in this struggle, we will know the greatest joy of all - the joy of watching our grandchildren secure with the blessings of liberty, studying arts and literature in a free nation and under God's grace, once again.

Ladies and Gentlemen, isn't that worth devoting the rest of our lives to achieve?

"Getting Sharon's record out in the open might even persuade the Israelis to re-examine their compulsive habit of voting for war criminals." - Ahmed Amr

Sharon's Willing Media Collaborators

By Ahmed Amr